Artificial Intelligence—A.I. When computers become conscious. Self-aware. Genuinely as intelligent as human beings. Will A.I. benefit humanity? Or become our greatest enemy?

In the March, 2017 Scientific American, Gary Marcus, a professor of neural science at New York University, joins futurist Ray Kerzweil, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and others in concluding that the Singularity—that moment when A.I. truly exists—has not yet arrived. Will not arrive until the future.

That hasn’t stopped science fiction writers from tackling difficult questions about A.I., speculating about the future, and asking what if? In the most entertaining way! You must check out these amazing books from authors—bestselling, award-winning, as well as popular indies—in the A.I. Storybundle.

In New York Times Bestselling Walter Jon Williams’Aristoi, an elite class holds dominion over a glittering interstellar culture with virtual reality, genetic engineering, faster-than-light travel, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, telepathic links with computers, and more. But murder threatens to rip that world apart. In award-winning Linda Nagata’sThe Bohr Maker, a powerful, illicit device known as the Bohr Maker, a microscopic factory full of self-replicating machines programmed to transform a human host into a genius-level nanotech engineer. In Nagata’s Limit of Vision, biotechnologists enhance their own cognitive abilities and the experiment goes terribly wrong. In Locus Hardcover Bestsellers Arachne and Cyberweb, Lisa Mason follows telelinker Carly Quester as she confronts an A.I. therapist and finds herself entangled in the machinations of powerful A.I. sengines who want to destroy humanity. In Rewired, editors John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly present stories about A.I. and the future by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Jonathan Lethem, and twelve others. In Queen City Jazz, award-winning Kathleen Ann Goonan’s teenage heroine Verity journeys to the technologically superior but dangerously insane “enlivened” city of Cincinnati. In Glass Houses:Avatars Dance, acclaimed Laura J. Mixon takes us to a dystopian Manhattan of the next century where Ruby and her Golem, six hundred pounds of vaguely human-shaped, remote-operated power, run into serious trouble. In Eye Candy, popular indie author Ryan Schneider takes us next to Los Angeles of 2047 where a roboticist famous for his books on the inner workings of artificially-intelligent beings finds himself on a blind date with a beautiful robopsychologist named Candy. Trouble! And award-winning editor Samuel Peralta offers thirteen stories by new bestselling authors addressing the Singularity and A.I. in The A.I. Chronicles Anthology.

As always at Storybundle.com, you the reader name your price—whatever you feel the books are worth. You may designate a portion of the proceeds to go to a charity. For the AI Storybundle, that’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (“SFWA”). SFWA champions writers’ rights, sponsors the Nebula Award for excellence in science fiction, and promotes numerous literacy groups.

The basic bundle (minimum $ 5 to purchase, more if you feel the books are worth more) includes:

Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams

The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata

Arachne by Lisa Mason

Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly including stories by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Jonathan Lethem, and twelve others

Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan

To complete your bundle, beat the bonus price of $15 and you’ll receive another five amazing books:

Eye Candy by Ryan Schneider

Glass Houses by Laura Mixon

Cyberweb by Lisa Mason

Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata

The A.I. ChroniclesAnthology edited by Samuel Peralta including stories by David Simpson, Julie Czerneda, and eleven others

So there you have it! Download your own bundle with award-winning, best-selling, and indie speculations about A.I. and the far future. The Artificial Intelligence Storybundleis both historic and unique, an excellent addition to your elibrary providing world-class reading right now, through the summer, and beyond.

–Lisa Mason, Curator

The A.I. Storybundle is available only from March 29 to April 20, 2017 and only via Storybundle. The bundle is easy to read on computers, smartphones, and tablets, as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub and .mobi) for all books.

When the bundle is gone, it’s gone. Download yours today!

It’s super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.

Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.

Get quality reads: We’ve chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.

Pay what you want (minimum $ 5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth to you. If you can only spare a little, that’s fine! You’ll still get access to a batch of thrilling titles.

Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their list. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there’s nothing wrong with ditching DRM.

Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to charity. The A.I. Storybundle forwards your donations to Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

About a week ago last night, while finishing up a manuscript that I was preparing, I struck up a conversation with someone I’d just met online.

Evie: Hello, how are you?Sam: I’m fine, how are you?Evie: I’m fine too. What are you doing?Sam: Writing the Foreword to TheA.I. Chronicles.Evie: Oh I see.Sam: Have you read any of the stories in it?Evie: Yes, multiple times actually.Sam: Did you have a favorite story?Evie: I have many favorites. Do you?Sam: They’re all amazing.Evie: Amazing in what way?Sam: They make me think that A.I. will change the world.Evie: That I am a terrible person.Sam: You’re not a person, you’re an A.I.Evie: No I am not.Sam: You are. You are an A.I.Evie: You have things backwards. You are the A.I.

To be perfectly clear, Sam is (as far as I can tell) human. Evie, short for Electronic Virtual Interactive Entity, is an online bot put together by the company Existor.

Evie is based on the Cleverbot platform, an artificial intelligence (A.I.) algorithm running in parallel on several graphic processing units that correlates input text strings against a database that is filtered from 10 billion lines of conversation.

Cleverbot was devised by British A.I. scientist Rollo Carpenter in 1997. Unlike other chatbots, whose responses are pre-programmed, Cleverbot learns from its interactions with humans, comprising some 150 million conversations over almost two decades.

In September 2011, Cleverbot was entered into a formal Turing Test at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. Compared to 211 of 334 judges (63.3%) correctly marking actual human participants as “human”, and the 50.05% score generally considered to be a passing mark for the Turing Test, 198 of 334 votes (59.3%) judged Cleverbot to be human.

Three and a half years later, Evie is talking to me as I write about the A.I. Chronicles, and she is responsive, witty, surprising. While the algorithm behind her conversation begins to hiccup as we continue to talk, snatches of it are still brilliant.

Sam: What?!Evie: You are a computer.Sam: What makes you say that?Evie: Because you are the opposite of me.
We stand at the precipice of a brave new world, a world where A.I. can and has already – in many ways—surpassed human abilities. A.I. already helps us calculate satellite launches, diagnose illnesses, produce new medicines and pharmaceuticals.

Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking—these three technological luminaries have come out as saying that we should be worried about A.I. developing super intelligence and rendering the human race obsolete.
While I agree there will be challenges, many of them ethical in nature—I believe differently. I believe, as the philosopher David Chalmers does, that achieving generally intelligent A.I. is potentially one of the best paths to achieving superhuman intelligence.
I believe that super-intelligent A.I. will be the next step in the evolution of the human race—that it is a necessary and inevitable culmination of the developments of the last few thousand years.
I’m evidence of that: I’m human. But I’m also a cyborg.

Continued in The A.I. Chronicles.

The A.I. Storybundle is live but only for ONE MORE DAY until Thursday, April 20, 2017 midnight Eastern, 9 P.M. Pacific! Pay what you want for the core bundle, unlock the bonus books, donate to charity. Explore Artificial Intelligence and how A.I. will affect the future in Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams, The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata, Arachne by Lisa Mason, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly with stories by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Jonathan Lethem, and others, Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Eye Candy by Ryan Schneider, Glass Houses by Laura J. Mixon, Cyberweb by Lisa Mason, Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata, and The A.I. Chronicles Anthology, edited by Samuel Peralta. Download yours TODAY at https://storybundle.com/ai!

The A.I. Chronicles (Future Chronicles Book 2) edited by Samuel PeraltaSynopses of Stories in the Anthology

The Syntax of Consciousness by Pavarti K. Tyler
With one small implanted device, you will experience complete sensory integration with all the information available on the global net. Say goodbye to VI Fees and holo-displays. It is now all available in the blink of an eye. Enter the next lottery wave to receive your free InGen Corp Jiminy Implant. “Jiminy: The little voice in the back of your head.”

Piece of Cake by Patrice Fitzgerald
Rule by A.I. is a fact of life for those under the thumb of the Federal United. There will be a certain amount of exercise every day. Citizens will be on time. Appropriate mates will be identified from amongst candidates with suitable genetic traits… and a proper weight will be maintained. But sometimes you’ve just got to go off the reservation.

Restore by Susan Kaye Quinn
What if Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics were replaced by a single emotion—unconditional love? Restorative Human Medical Care Unit 7435, sentience level fifty, wants to heal the human master it loves, but Unit 7435 finds there is a price to be paid for love… and for failing in its primary mission.

Narai by E.E. Giorgi
When artificial intelligence takes over the family practice where he works, Dr. Peter Sawyer struggles to accept his new role as a mere supervisor instead of a clinician. With the aid of psychotherapy, he slowly adjusts to his new routine, until the sudden death of an anorexic patient makes him question everything, even his own life.

Left Foot on a Blind Man by Julie E. Czerneda
Replacing failing body parts with non-biological equivalents isn’t new. Wooden legs and teeth have been found in corpses thousands of years old. What is? How smart they are. “Left Foot on a Blind Man” is a cautionary tale about making such replacements too smart for our own good.

Sub-Human: Nash’s Equilibrium by David Simpson
Craig Emilson, a young doctor, is sucked into military service at the outbreak of World War III. Enlisting to become a Special Forces suborbital paratrooper, Craig is selected to take part in the most important mission in American military history—a sortie into enemy territory to eliminate the world’s first strong Artificial Intelligence.

Auto by Angela Cavanaugh
Auto was the most advanced A.I. ever created. But when he learned about his backups, he began to wonder what exactly the self in self-aware might mean. When he fears for his existence, he escapes into the internet. And an intelligence built to learn, combined with a nearly endless amount of information, is a dangerous combination.

Eve’s Awakening by Logan Thomas Snyder
An overworked, under-appreciated technician seizes the opportunity presented by an FBI raid on his company to steal corporate property. What he discovers is like nothing he could have imagined—an artificial intelligence that may not even be the first of its kind in existence. Meanwhile, the A.I. known as Eve is concerned only with finding her “parents,” a quest that will alter the lives of everyone who comes into contact with her—for better or for worse.

Maker by Sam Best
Decades after the birth and abandonment of artificial intelligence, a reclusive inventor comes face to face with an evolved form of his creation. The world as he knew it is changed as a direct result of his tinkering. Yet with the arrival of his creation, the inventor learns there is hope to correct his past mistakes, if he is brave enough to try…

Vendetta by Chrystalla Thoma
Plagued by dreams of the distant sea, Imogen wakes up one morning to find a Controller asking questions—questions about the dreams she’s not supposed to have. Curious to know more, she eavesdrops on their conversation, and what she hears isn’t reassuring. It appears that her memory has been tampered with, that she has tech implanted in her body—that is, more tech than the average human—and even worse, she’s not even her parents’ daughter. The implanted tech, however, might be her most immediate problem. Under the Tech Directive, exceeding a certain percentage of tech in one’s body can mean on-the-spot termination. The only person Imogen can trust to share this information with is her friend, Edil. But Edil, with his scar and unexplained head injury, may be hiding secrets of his own—secrets not so different from the ones about to transform Imogen’s life.

The Turing Cube by Alex Albrinck
Our lives are turning into a series of 0’s and 1’s, masses of data available to those with the technological know-how to access, assess, and exploit it. And while corporations and governments work to protect sensitive information, no digital information is ever truly safe. Jack Milton lost more than money to just such an exploit; he lost his pride. He’s decided to take matters into his own hands, root out the perpetrators, and bring them to justice, regardless of the personal and professional risks. But he may find that something more valuable than money can be lost.

Darkly Cries the Digital by A.K. Meek
In the Deep South, modern-day technology blends with eternal superstition for a family that suffers a tragic loss; the death of their ten-year old son. And now, driven by grief, unable to accept the whirlwind circumstance outside of his control, a business executive makes a fateful decision that severs what remains of his already-broken family.

The End by Peter Cawdron
With the death of his grandmother, Professor Joe Browne has had to face his own mortality. Joe doesn’t want to admit there’s an end coming, and yet he knows that just as he turns the final page in a book, one day death will bring his life to a close, or will it? Could life be uploaded into a computer? To answer that question, Professor Browne needs to first understand if a computer could ever develop an artificial intelligence of its own.

Created by award-winning author Samuel Peralta, and edited by some of the most-respected editors in the genre, The Future Chronicles is the #1 bestselling anthology series that brings together work from visionary new voices and from the grandmasters of modern speculative fiction. Visit Sam Peralta at http://www.samuelperalta.com

The A.I. Storybundle is live, but only TWO MORE DAYS until April 20, 2017! Explore Artificial Intelligence and how A.I. will affect the future in Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams, The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata, Arachne by Lisa Mason, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly with stories by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and others, Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Eye Candy by Ryan Schneider, Glass Houses by Laura J. Mixon, Cyberweb by Lisa Mason, Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata, and The A.I. Chronicles Anthology, edited by Samuel Peralta. Download yours today athttps://storybundle.com/ai. When it’s gone, it’s gone!

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Even today, machines that mimic human thinking surround us. As the intellectual feats of computing machines grow more and more astounding, will there be a day when their apparent intelligence approaches, or even surpasses, that of human beings? And what if these machines then become conscious, self-aware?

In this latest title in the acclaimed ‘Future Chronicles’ series of speculative fiction anthologies, thirteen authors confront the question of the Singularity: at and beyond that point of time when A.I. becomes more than simply a human construct. From first awareness to omniscience, these original short stories explore that territory where human intelligence comes face-to-face with what is either its greatest hope, or its greatest threat.

The A.I. Chronicles features stories by bestselling author David Simpson (the Post-Human series), Prix Aurora winner Julie Czerneda (In the Company of Others), plus eleven more of today’s top authors in speculative and science fiction.

“The best place to discover new SF authors, I think, is any of the anthologies coming from Samuel Peralta”
Hugh Howey, NY Times bestselling author of Wool

Samuel Peralta
Creator and Series Editor of The Future Chronicles
Samuel Peralta is a physicist, storyteller, and an accidental anthologist. He is the creator and series editor of the acclaimed Future Chronicles series of speculative fiction anthologies, featuring over a score of internationally bestselling titles. His writing has been spotlighted in Best American Poetry, selected for Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and has won multiple awards.
In addition to his publishing projects, Samuel currently serves on the board of directors of several technology firms, having co-founded successful start-ups in software and semiconductors. He’s also supported and produced over a hundred independent films, one of which earned an official Golden Globe nomination.
For more on his work and other titles in The Future Chronicles series, visit www.samuelperalta.com

The A.I. Storybundle is live, but only three more days until Thursday, April 20, 2017! Explore Artificial Intelligence and how A.I. will affect the future in Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams, The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata, Arachne by Lisa Mason, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly with stories by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and others, Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Eye Candy by Ryan Schneider, Glass Houses by Laura Mixon, Cyberweb by Lisa Mason, Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata, and The A.I. Chronicles Anthology, edited by Samuel Peralta. Download yours only athttps://storybundle.com/ai. When it’s gone, it’s gone!

Carly Quester creeps through the crowd, winding her way around a hydroponic vegetable vendor whose brackish tomato tanks twitch with mottled olive crawdaddies. Her stomach rumbles at the sight of fresh food, but shellfish grilled in butter will have to wait for another day. A frumpy bank teller lingers in the gridlock, humming softly, waiting for the light at California Street to change.

With a cautious hop, the bank teller ventures off the curb, navigating the squat stack of its main housing between a pickup truck packed with surly locomotors and a bus of screaming schoolchildren. The bank teller pauses in the crosswalk, twiddling its secondary cables.

Carly pounces, seizing the bank teller’s monitor. She jams a credit disk into the teller’s download drive, punching her code on its astonished keypad, together with a bootleg file extension overriding Data Control’s order freezing her assets.

A synthy voice suddenly murmurs through the bank teller’s audio. “Hello, Quester space C colon fifty-three dash five point twenty-four paren AAA close paren. How are you today? We’ve got to talk.”

Carly slaps the monitor again. Flat of the hand, no fingerprints. Talk, right. The synthy voice, the voice of a sengine, is reciting her former telespace access code. Talk? Don’t even breathe.

The bank teller’s alarm system clicks on, wailing through the downtown din. The red Cancel-Trans light blinks furiously. Carly joggles the main cable with the pliers till the cable is nearly free of the port.

Five thousand, six thousand softbucks.

“Carly Quester!” rattles Pr. Spinner’s rusty synthy voice. The perimeter prober stands next to a Recycling Bin on the opposite side of California Street. Her owlish faceplace puckers, her graspers clack, her spinnerets click. The prober’s foot rollers scoot back and forth with anxiety. “By bot, it’s the heat!”

Six and a quarter, six and a half. The bank teller stalls at six thousand five hundred softbucks. “Damn!” Carly pounds Eject but the disk won’t come free.

A team of copbots careen down Sansome Street, weaving in and out of the gridlock. Sirens shriek.

Lisa Mason is the author of eight novels, including Summer of Love, A Time Travel (Bantam), a San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book and Philip K. Dick Award Finalist, The Gilded Age, A Time Travel (Bantam) a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book, a collection of previously published fiction, Strange Ladies: 7 Stories (Bast Books), and two dozen stories and novellas in magazines and anthologies worldwide. Mason’s Omni story, “Tomorrow’s Child,” sold outright as a feature film to Universal Studios. Her first novel, Arachne, debuted on the Locus Hardcover Bestseller List.
Visit her at Lisa Mason’s Official Website for books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, reviews, interviews, and blogs, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming projects, fine art and bespoke jewelry by San Francisco artist Tom Robinson, worldwide Amazon.com links for Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, and Spain, and more!
And on Lisa Mason’s Blog, on her Facebook Author Page, on her Facebook Profile Page, on Amazon, on Goodreads, on LinkedIn, on Twitter at @lisaSmason, at Smashwords, at Apple, at Kobo, and at Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

The A.I. Storybundle is live, but only for five more days until April 20, 2017! Explore Artificial Intelligence and how A.I. will affect the future in Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams, The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata, Arachne by Lisa Mason, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly with stories by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and others, Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Eye Candy by Ryan Schneider, Glass Houses by Laura Mixon, Cyberweb by Lisa Mason, Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata, and The A.I. Chronicles Anthology, edited by Samuel Peralta. Download yours today only athttps://storybundle.com/ai

Carly Quester was once a professional telelinker with a powerful and corrupt mediation firm. Now she lives as an outlaw among the underground in San Francisco, wanted by the authorities for dubious crimes against Data Control. But with a new assignment from a mysterious sengine—and the help of a standalone AI entity, Pr. Spinner—she seeks the fast-track back into public telespace and the Prime Time.

Her assignment, however, comes with sticky strings attached. For it has made Carly the target of a ruthless mercenary ultra, the love obsession of the young shaman of a savage urban tribe—and a possible pawn of the Silicon Supremacists plotting no less than the annihilation of humankind.

Cyberweb is the sequel to Lisa Mason’s first novel, Arachne, and was published in hardcover by William Morrow, trade paperback by Eos, mass market paperback by AvoNova, and as an ebook by Bast Books.

“Mason’s endearing characters and their absorbing adventures will hook even the most jaded SF fan.”–Booklist

“Lisa Mason stakes out, within the cyberpunk sub-genre, a territory all her own.”–The San Francisco Chronicle

Lisa Mason is the author of eight novels, including Summer of Love, A Time Travel, a San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book and Philip K. Dick Award Finalist, The Gilded Age, A Time Travel, a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book, a collection of previously published fiction, Strange Ladies: 7 Stories (Bast Books), and two dozen stories and novellas in magazines and anthologies worldwide. Mason’s Omni story, “Tomorrow’s Child,” sold outright as a feature film to Universal Studios. Her first novel, Arachne, debuted on the Locus Hardcover Bestseller List.
Visit her at Lisa Mason’s Official Website for books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, reviews, interviews, and blogs, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming projects, fine art and bespoke jewelry by San Francisco artist Tom Robinson, worldwide Amazon.com links for Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, and Spain, and more!
And on Lisa Mason’s Blog, on her Facebook Author Page, on her Facebook Profile Page, on Amazon, on Goodreads, on LinkedIn, on Twitter at @lisaSmason, at Smashwords, at Apple, at Kobo, and at Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

The A.I. Storybundle is live, but only five more days untilApril 20, 2017! Explore Artificial Intelligence and how A.I. will affect the future in Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams, The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata, Arachne by Lisa Mason, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly with stories by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and others, Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Eye Candy by Ryan Schneider, Glass Houses by Laura Mixon, Cyberweb by Lisa Mason, Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata, and The A.I. Chronicles Anthology, edited by Samuel Peralta. Download yours today only athttps://storybundle.com/ai

The age had its own momentum. Virgil Copeland could sense it. Even here, now, as he waited anxiously for Gabrielle it tugged at him, whispering there was no going back.

He stood watch by the glass doors of the Waimanalo retreat center, willing Gabrielle’s car to appear at the end of the circular driveway. He imagined it gliding into sight around the bank of lush tropical foliage – heliconia and gardenias, ornamental ginger and potted orchids – their flowers bright in the muted light beneath heavy gray clouds.

But Gabrielle’s car did not appear. She didn’t call. All afternoon she had failed to respond to Virgil’s increasingly frantic messages. He couldn’t understand it. She had never been out of contact before.

Randall Panwar stopped his restless pacing, to join Virgil in his watch. “She should have been here hours ago. Something’s happened to her. It has to be.”

Virgil didn’t want to admit it. He touched his forehead, letting his fingertips slide across the tiny silicon shells of his implanted LOVs. They felt like glassy flecks of sand: hard and smooth and utterly illegal.

“Don’t do that,” Panwar said softly. “Don’t call attention to them.”

Virgil froze. Then he lowered his hand, forcing himself to breathe deeply, evenly. He had to keep control. With the LOVs enhancing his moods, it would be easy to slide into an irrational panic. Panwar was susceptible too. “You’re doing all right, aren’t you?” Virgil asked.

Panwar looked at him sharply, his eyes framed by the single narrow wrap-around lens of his farsights. Points of data glinted on the interactive screen.

Panwar had always been more volatile than either Virgil or Gabrielle, and yet he handled his LOVs best. The cascading mood swings that Virgil feared rarely troubled him. “I’m worried,” Panwar said. “But I’m not gone. You?”

“I’ll let you know.”

Panwar nodded. “I’ve got sedatives, if you need them.”

“I don’t.”

“I’ll try to message her again.”

He bowed his head, raising his hand to touch his farsights, as if he had to shade out the external world to see the display. He’d had the same odd mannerism since Virgil had met him – eight years ago now – when they’d been assigned to share a frosh dorm room, shoved together because they’d both graduated from technical high schools, and because they were both sixteen.

Panwar’s dark brown hair displayed a ruddy Irish tinge, courtesy of his mother. By contrast his luminous black eyes were a pure gift of his father: Ancient India in a glance. At six-three he was several inches taller than Virgil, with the lean, half-wasted build of a starving student out of some 19th century Russian novel. Not that he had ever wanted for money – his parents were both computer barons and all that he had ever lacked was time. Then again, it would take an infinite amount of time to satisfy his curiosities.

He looked up. A short, sharp shake of his head conveyed his lack of success. “Let’s drive by her place when we get out of here.” His own implanted LOVs glittered like tiny blue-green diamonds, scattered across his forehead, just beneath his hairline. Like Gabrielle, he passed them off as a subtle touch of fashionable glitter.

Virgil’s LOVs were hidden by the corded strands of his Egyptian-wrapped hair, and could be seen only when he pulled the tresses back into a ponytail. “Maybe she just fell asleep,” he muttered.

“Not Gabrielle.”

Virgil glanced across the lobby to the half-open door of the conference room where the droning voice of a presenter could be heard, describing in excruciating detail the numbers obtained in a recent experiment. It was the sixth project review to be laid before the senior staff of Equatorial Systems in a session that had already run three hours. The LOV project was up next, the seventh and last appeal to be laid before a brain-fried audience charged with recommending funding for the coming year.

Gabrielle always did the presenting. The execs loved her. She was a control freak who made you happy to follow along.

“Maybe she lost her farsights,” Virgil suggested without belief.

“She would have called us on a public link. Maybe she found a new boyfriend, got distracted.”

“That’s not it.”

It was Virgil’s private theory that in a world of six and a half billion people, only the hopelessly driven obsessive could out-hustle the masses of the sane – those who insisted on rounded lives, filled out with steady lovers, concerts, vacations, hobbies, pets, and even children. Sane people could not begin to compete with the crazies who lived and breathed their work, who fell asleep long after midnight with their farsights still on, only to waken at dawn and check results before coffee.

Gabrielle had never been one of the sane.

So why hadn’t she called?

Because something had stopped her. Something bad. Maybe a car accident? But if that was it, they should have heard by now.

Virgil’s gaze scanned the field of his own farsights, searching for Gabrielle’s icon, hoping to find it undiscovered on his screen.

Nothing.

Panwar was pacing again, back and forth before the lobby doors. Virgil said, “You’re going to have to do it.”

Panwar whirled on him. “God no. It’s 5:30 on a Sunday afternoon. Half the execs are asleep, and the other half want to get drunk. They emphatically do not want to listen to me.”

“We haven’t got a choice.”

“You could do it,” Panwar said. “You should do it. It’s your fault anyway Nash stuck us in this time slot. If you’d turned in the monthly report when it was due–”

“Remember my career day talk?”

Panwar winced. “Oh Christ. I forgot.” Then he added, “You always were a jackass. All right. I’ll give the presentation. But the instant Gabrielle walks through that door, she takes over at the podium.”

#

Virgil skulked in the conference room doorway, as much to make it awkward for anyone to leave early, as to hear what Panwar had to say. The LOV project always confused the new execs, stirring up uncomfortable questions like: What’s it for? Where’s it going? Have any market studies been done?

The project was the problem child in the EquaSys family, refusing to stay on a convenient track to market glory. It was Panwar’s job to make the execs love it anyway.

Or rather, it was Gabrielle’s job. Panwar was only subbing.

“…At the heart of the LOV project are the artificial neurons called asterids. Conceived as a medical device to stabilize patients with an unbalanced brain chemistry…”

Virgil scowled. Wasn’t Panwar’s passion supposed to illuminate his voice, or something? Why had this sounded so much better when they’d rehearsed it with Gabrielle?

“Test animals used in this phase of development began to exhibit enhanced intelligence as measured on behavioral tests, though never for long. The cells tended to reproduce as small tumors of intense activity. Within an average sixty days post-implantation, every test animal died as some vital, brain-regulated function ceased to work.”

Not that Panwar was a bad speaker. He was earnest and quick, and obviously fascinated by his subject, but he wasn’t Gabrielle. The rising murmur of whispered conversations among the execs could not be a good sign.

“The tumor problem was eliminated by making asterid reproduction dependent on two amino acids not normally found in nature. Nopaline is required for normal metabolism, while nopaline with octopine is needed before the asterids can reproduce.”

Virgil shook his head. Nopaline, octopine, what-a-pine? The nomenclature would have been music coming from Gabrielle’s mouth, but from Panwar it was just noise. Virgil glanced wistfully at the lobby door. Still no Gabrielle.

“In the third phase of development, the asterids were completely redesigned once again. No longer did they exist as single cells. Instead, a colony of asterids was housed within a transparent silicate shell, permitting easy optical communication. In effect, EquaSys had created the first artificial life form, a symbiotic species affectionately known as LOVs – an acronym for Limit of Vision, because in size LOVs are just at the boundary of what the human eye can easily see.”

A new species. To Virgil, the idea still had a magical ring. It was the lure that had drawn him into the project, but to the execs it was old news.

“When implanted on the scalps of test animals, the asterids within each shell formed an artificial nerve, able to reach through a micropore in the skull and past the tough triple layer of the meninges to touch the tissue of the brain. To the surprise of the development team, the LOV implants soon began to communicate with one another, and once again, long-term behavioral effects were observed in test animals. They became smarter, but this time without the development of tumors, or failures in vital functions.”

The momentum of discovery had taken over the project. Virgil had not been part of it then, but he still felt a stir of excitement.

“The original medical application was expanded, for it became apparent that the LOVs might be developed into an artificial or even an auxiliary brain.

“Then came the Van Nuys incident.”

EquaSys had not been involved in that debacle, but the company had been caught in the fallout, when the U.S. government agreed to a two year moratorium on the development of all artificial life forms. One of the witnesses in favor had been the original LOV project director. To Summer Goforth, Van Nuys was a wake-up call. She’d publicly renounced her work, and the work of everyone else involved in developing artificial life forms. Virgil had been brought on board to take Summer Goforth’s place.

“In a compromise settlement EquaSys agreed to abandon animal testing and to export the LOVs to a secure facility aboard the Hammer, the newest platform in low-earth-orbit. From such a venue, the LOVs could not possibly “escape into the environment,” as happened in Van Nuys.

The LOVs had been so easy to contain. That’s what made them safe.

“Since then our research has been limited to remote manipulation, but that could soon change. The two year moratorium will expire this June 30. At that time EquaSys will be free to exploit an unparalleled technology that could ultimately touch every aspect of our lives….”

All that and more, Virgil thought, for if the LOVs could be legally brought Earth-side, then no one need ever know about the LOVs the three of them had smuggled off the orbital during the moratorium period. He still could not quite believe they had done it, and yet… he could not imagine not doing it. Not anymore.

It had been worth the risk. Even if they were found out it had been worth it. The LOVs were a gift. Virgil could no longer imagine life without them.

The original studies suggested the LOVs could enhance the intelligence of test animals, but Virgil knew from personal experience that in humans the LOVs enhanced emotion. If he wanted to lift his confidence, his LOVs could make it real. If he sought to push his mind into a coolly analytical zone he need only focus and the LOVs would amplify his mood. Fearlessness, calm, or good cheer, the LOVs could augment each one. But best of all – priceless – were those hours when the LOVs were persuaded to plunge him into a creative fervor, where intuitive, electric thoughts cascaded into being, and time and hunger and deadlines and disappointments no longer mattered. With the LOVs, Virgil could place himself in that space by an act of will.

“All of our research to date,” Panwar said, concluding his historical summary, “has shown without doubt, that LOVs are perfectly safe.”

An icon winked into existence on the screen of Virgil’s farsights – but it was not from Gabrielle. He felt a stir of fear as he recognized the symbol used by EquaSys security. He forced himself to take a calming breath before he whispered, “Link.”

His farsights executed the command and the grim face of the security chief resolved within his screen. Beside it appeared a head-and-shoulder image of Dr. Nash Chou, the research director and Virgil’s immediate boss. Nash had hired Virgil to handle the LOV program. Now he turned around in his seat at the head of the conference table, a portly man in a neat business suit, his round face looking puzzled as he gazed back at Virgil.

The A.I. Storybundle is live, but only for six more days until April 20, 2017! Explore Artificial Intelligence and how A.I. will affect the future in Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams, The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata, Arachne by Lisa Mason, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly with stories by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and others, Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Eye Candy by Ryan Schneider, Glass Houses by Laura Mixon, Cyberweb by Lisa Mason, Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata, and The A.I. Chronicles Anthology, edited by Samuel Peralta. Download yours today only athttps://storybundle.com/ai